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This is the most important invention since the printing press.

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It comes in many shapes and sizes and has even more names.

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But don't worry about that. According to the sellers of these amazing little gadgets,

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they do everything from saving you money, to cleaning your dirty, unstable electricity,

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to helping you finally get a good night's sleep.

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But you better hurry. We're almost sold out.

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There's no time for research when other people are buying them all.

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Just look at this graph.

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And if you act right now, you'll get 50.

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65. No, wait, 70% off.

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Look at all these logos of news organizations that you might trust.

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Don't they look nice here? Or maybe over here?

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Wow, these sites really are a masterclass in scummy marketing.

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But the craziest thing about these little miracle gizmos,

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they aren't actually a scam.

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I mean, they absolutely are a scam.

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But at the same time, you know what, this is going to take some explaining up.

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Roll the thing for our sponsor. Let's kick off with the beef you're feeling one with the all-metal housing.

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If this thing's just a rock and some hot glue, this is going to be a real short video.

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Man, this thing is cool. We can see every individual wire in here.

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On the next slide, we get a really good look at a couple of resistors.

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We've also got what looks like a little LED here.

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And this boxy structure, if we alter our view a little bit,

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and hence shows us that this is in fact a capacitor.

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We can see the two conductive plates inside of it.

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Now, if half of the manufacturer claims that these are true,

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that right there is the hardest working capacitor on the planet.

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Let's change gears and move over to our plastic ones.

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Well, it seems like they've got a couple more components on their boards,

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including some capacitors on the boards themselves.

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But the design is similar overall. So why don't we change gears and talk about what these things are supposed to do.

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If you're familiar with electrical circuits, you might already know about inductive, resistive, and capacitive loads.

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For everyone else, here's the TLDR.

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If something is mostly just making heat, like a hot plate,

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or an old-school incandescent light bulb, it's a resistive load, and the voltage and current remain in phase or lined up.

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If something is moving, ceiling fans and washing machines are good examples here.

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It's probably an inductive load, and the current legs behind the voltage by 90 degrees.

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Capacitive loads, meanwhile, tend to be more hidden, especially in the home.

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This is where the current leads 90 degrees ahead of voltage.

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So these loads are typically used to balance out inductive loads,

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and they're mostly found in, well, stuff that has capacitors in it.

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Like this PrimePX power supply from our sponsor C-Sonic,

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who has more models rated at titanium or above by cybernetics than any other manufacturer.

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That means more than 90% efficiency with a power factor of 0.98 or better.

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That power factor thing, that's going to mean something to you in a minute.

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Coming back to different kinds of loads. If you've got a big industrial building that is stuffed full of AC motors, transformers, and the like,

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you can end up with so much inductive load

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that it actually starts to impact the efficiency of the power grid itself.

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I'm not talking efficiency like some waste heat from your noodle extruding machine.

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I'm talking the power company needs to send you more power than you're actually using,

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harming their efficiency. That's where something called the power factor comes into play.

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It's a measure of how much power is doing work, called active power,

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versus how much power it looks like you're using, called apparent power.

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And we can find it with this very Pythagoras-y looking formula here.

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The ideal power factor is 1, meaning that all the power you're drawing from the grid is doing actual work.

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Anything lower and you are impacting the efficiency of the grid,

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which your power company is 100% going to charge you for.

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So then, how do you reduce the inductive load so your power company doesn't start piling on surcharges?

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Capacitors. The power system in any big industrial facility likely has one or more capacitor banks,

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which act to smooth out their heavy inductive loads,

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hence the capacitors that showed up on our CT scans.

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But here's the thing, while the theory is actually sound,

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residential customers, you know, the people they're marketing these devices to,

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don't get charged based on power factor.

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A big part of the reason for that is pretty much all of the heavy power devices in a house

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are either a resistive load, or they already have capacitors built into them to compensate for their inductive loads.

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We looked from Alberta to Zimbabwe, and across the board,

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residential and small business customers are built only for the active power used.

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Now, I'm sure there's some outliers that you guys are already furiously typing comments about,

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but generally speaking, it's only when you ramp up to large commercial and industrial facilities

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that power factor really enters the equation.

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And the folks selling these magical gizmos know all of this, they just don't care.

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Power factor is that convenient little nugget of truth that they can wrap in the layers and layers of BS marketing

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that your conspiracy loving uncle needs to convince them to buy these things for the entire family for Christmas this year.

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And some of them take their scam even further.

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Let's crack this one open using our handy-dandy precision screwdriver kit from lttstore.com.

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Built-in bit storage, fidget spinner worthy end cap, and built-in magnetic parts tray.

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With the one screw removed, uh, yes, not a whole lot going on in here.

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We've got a basic LED power circuit, that's how you know it's on.

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Then we just go ahead and remove the second screw, and this IC right here is a bridge rectifier that converts AC to DC, so far so good.

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But this is the part where we get into some funny business.

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Do you see our, um, capacitor here?

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Well, one of the two leads going to it doesn't seem to actually connect to the rest of the circuit.

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You can see it in the x-ray, or actually, just by holding it up to the light.

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There's no trace to that pad!

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So my question now then is, if this is just here for looks, is this even a real capacitor?

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Let's find out. Before I connect this, it's worth noting that this is in nanofarads right now, that's effectively zero.

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Moment of truth, is it a real capacitor?

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Survey says no. I gotta say, I'm actually kind of surprised that it is more cost-effective to build a fake capacitor than it was to drop the 15 or maybe 30 cents on a real one.

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It's got some weight to it, at least.

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Oh, did you cut one open? Let's have a look at our fake capacitor.

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Oh, is that, like, a little bit of cement that they just smeared on it?

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It kind of looks like that. Whatever it is.

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The bottom line is if you want to save some money on your power bill,

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maybe you should consider upgrading your rig to a new 80-plus platinum-rated PrimePX power supply from our sponsor, C-Sonic.

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The PrimePX series is fully modular, and has you covered all the way from 650 watts to 1600 watts,

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backed by an industry-leading 12-year warranty.

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It uses a 135mm fan to keep things cool and quiet,

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and that fan doesn't even spin up until it reaches somewhere in the neighborhood of around 30% load.

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With power supplies this efficient, more of your money is going right into those sweet, sweet FPS,

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instead of being wasted generating excess heat.

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And if you're not sure how much power you need, you can just click on the Calculate button on their website,

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and they will help you find the perfect fit. So find your next power supply at the link down below,

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and find your next video to watch at this video right here,

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where you can watch me get shocked repeatedly as we figure out

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if those wireless anti-static wristbands are a scam with the help of our friend ElectroBoom.

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Yo, Jordan, how much should we spend on these things? Uh, 20 bucks for four.

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Well, I mean, at that price, at least it's a decent value as a nightlight.

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$5 nightlight.